— witsandnuts

The monkeys and fireflies of Kuala Selangor

How’s everyone? I am back with loads of memories of my trip to Singapore and Malaysia. I always struggle with the starting point of sharing travel stories. It is like talking to a friend about my experience and/or someone asking me about the highlight of it — and I can not tell exactly because everything was part and parcel of this wonderful wandering. As I still need to catch up on a lot of things, here’s a primera.

We left Kuala Lumpur at 5:00 PM and reached Kuala Selangor after an hour drive. The road going up to the feeding area of the monkeys is steep.  The encounter with these friendly creatures, they are claimed so to be, because they do not bite, still fascinates me to this minute. I bet it is going to be like that forever.

The monkeys approached us conditionally. If you want to smell and look like the most attractive, you need to have a food with you. Your munchies suppliers are around and they are selling bananas and peanuts, for RM 3 (fewer pieces) and RM 4, respectively. We were advised to get the peanuts to make the feeding gradual and share the resources to several monkeys. I had to hide the pack of peanuts inside my bag, otherwise I probably have been “attacked” by the group of  monkeys. Apparently, they are not going to leave you until they see that everything’s consumed. Just like what happened with other visitors who have been too late in hiding the bananas.

Of course, I got a little envious at first because not so many monkeys were minding me. As we all know, they like bananas better. And then, they turned to me and did not want to leave me until they finished the last peanut. So, the key there is to play with the visibility of the food. Two monkeys even held my hands and hardly let go (and licked my fingers, as I re-watched the videos, my sort of screaming was hilarious “kinakain nila pati kamay ko!” ha ha ha). One even sat on my lap. The others climbed to the shoulders of other tourists.

Steps away from the feeding area, you are going to find those who are waiting for the sunset.

However, after we washed up, we did not stay long and drove down to River View Seafood Restaurant. The dishes were good and reasonably priced.

The setting of the sun was pretty, close to that one in Manila Bay. In a way, this natural occurrence brought me home. Sunset is always better in Southeast Asia.

After dinner, we headed to the Firefly Park Resort which is situated in another village. I have looked forward to this attraction because I want to reconnect with real fireflies. We were thankful that the weather was fine because the fireflies do not generously flicker when it rains.

With the other tourists, we rode the boat and were taken to darkness… and we saw the Christmas lights-like flickering of the fireflies. To be honest, I gave in with a little percentage of doubt to its 100% reality. My crazy skepticism whispered that “maybe” they put some lights to the trees. However, as we were in the river for more than half an hour and the boat started to touch the trees, the fireflies moved to our direction and landed on our hair and skin. They are for real! As the locals say, the male fireflies flash three times per second, while the female emits a glow of lesser intensity and flashes only once in three seconds. Also, only male fireflies flash in synchrony. And as you look up, the stars were twinkling cheerfully. It was like experiencing another world. Truly, a wonder of nature.

I did not have any good photos though since flash photography is not allowed. I cannot find a decent one after googling. I guess this is one of those experiences that, even without a snap, is going to be endlessly painted in my memory.

Next entry: Putrajaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia